


me and my broken heart

by glitteringconstellations



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Chronic Pain, Do Not Remove And Post Outside Of AO3, Do Not Repost To Pocket Fanfic Archive Library, Getting Together, Heart Attacks, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt/Comfort, I Do Not Consent To Any Profits Made As A Direct Or Indirect Result Of This Work, I Do Not Consent To Reposts Of My Content, Lance doesn't die don't worry, Langst, M/M, No one dies don't worry, The klance is super subtle, but I couldn't resist, cardiac arrest - Freeform, deathbed confessions, mentions of drug abuse, we don't talk about s8 in this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 18:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19090483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteringconstellations/pseuds/glitteringconstellations
Summary: “Your heart is compromised by a severe amount of scar tissue, and the damage is extensive. Scarred tissue doesn’t receive electrical stimuli as well as healthy tissue does. Its performance suffers even more so when placed under extreme duress, such as the many battles you have faced with Voltron.”The doctor highlighted a dark spot on his scan and pointed at it.“You run the risk of your heart suffering spontaneous failure, should the stimuli become blocked by such scarred tissue.”Lance blanched. “You’re saying I’m at risk of a heart attack.”





	me and my broken heart

**Author's Note:**

> Bad things happen bingo prompt: chronic pain with Lance as requested by anonymous. 
> 
>  
> 
> 1) I am stupidly proud of this one. I worked on it for over a week, nonstop. I actually beta'ed it for once (I know, right????). AND this marks the first time I've written something over 10k for a single installment/oneshot fic since 2014. It's been five years since I've made this milestone, so regardless of how I feel about the content (which I'm actually pretty pleased with how it turned out), I'm just over the moon I made it this far.   
>  2) See if you can spot the subtle nod to @drawmebabyblue's AU hehehe.   
>  3) For obvious reasons, please suspend disbelief re: medical conditions and procedures. I'm not a doctor by a long shot.   
>  4) Edit: many thanks to the ever lovely [Mytay](archiveofourown.org/users/mytay) for her input on the Spanish grammar. Thanks to her suggestions, those sections now read much more fluently <3 My Spanish leaves much to be desired, sadly.

Lance McClain considered himself a lucky man. Stupidly lucky, in fact. Against all odds, he somehow managed to survive not one but two brushes with death in the last six months alone. All the other close calls before then notwithstanding, of course.

He really ought to have known better than to tempt fate a third time.

Constellations he recognized glittered and twinkled overhead—Orion, Aquarius, Canis Major, and so, so many more; each of them dazzling and beautiful in a breathtaking sort of way. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to appreciate just how much he missed being able to look up at the sky and trace the lines of shapes he’d long since memorized. Not when his breath was taken in an entirely different way.

Now was the absolute _worst_ time for him to have an attack.

The others’ cheers rang hollow in his ears.

“It’s the Milky Way!”

“Home…”

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

Lance had to swallow back a pitiful whine. Why now? They were _so close_. Earth was just beyond their reach. He cursed internally at his rotten luck, trying to quell the usual panic that threatened to overwhelm him. His heart rate continued to skyrocket, the fluttering, swooping feeling in his chest uncomfortable, but not unusual.

He’d made it through much worse than this.

Summoning his mental checklist, he ran through the steps, muttering them under his breath. Stay calm. Check. Or, well. He was working on it. Good enough. Next. Focus on the breath; in through the nose, out through the mouth. Well, he was breathing, sort of. That was a start. Next. Get to a safe place. That was out, he thought bitterly, considering they were _still in Voltron_. Whatever, moving on.

An agonizing pain shot through his chest, sudden and sharp. Lance only barely managed to stifle the gasp, gripping the levers of the Red Lion so tight his knuckles must have turned white beneath his gloves. Waves of alarm coursed through him from the Lion. The cockpit began to spin around him; whether that was from Voltron speeding through the solar system at Keith’s command or from something else, Lance didn’t know. As quickly as it began, though, the pain ebbed away.

 _That_ was new. A cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

Stay calm, he told himself. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

The pain came back without warning, even sharper than before and persisting longer. Lance grit his teeth through it. He’d survived worse. When the pain faded again, he relaxed, but was given not even a heartbeat’s worth of rest before it returned. His chest twinged in nearly unbearable pain when he tried to draw more than shallow breaths. The cycle repeated itself again, and again, each time worse than the one before.

This wasn’t normal. Not even for him. Panic rose, bubbling to the boiling point somewhere in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t catch his breath.

What was _happening_?

 

* * *

 

A wet towel came down on Lance’s face with a soft _thwap_. Lance squawked indignantly, quickly sitting up where he’d sprawled out on the floor of the training deck.

“Hey!”

Peeling the towel from over his eyes, he glared up at his assailant. Hunk shot him a cheeky grin from the bench near the door, waving a water pouch at him. Lance curled his lip up in a faux scowl, annoyance quickly fading as he pried himself up from the floor and made his way to plop down next to Hunk. He let his bayard dissolve in a flash of light and tossed it on the bench beside him with a clatter.

“Getting some extra training in, huh?” Hunk said, passing the water pouch over. Lance took it with a grateful hum and stabbed the straw through it with perhaps a little too much force.

“Yeah,” he mumbled around the straw. “Trying to, anyway.” His abysmal score remained illuminated on the holoscreen across the deck. Hunk peered up at it and let out a low whistle.

“That’s… sure something,” Hunk said. Lance groaned, slumping back against the wall and sucking down the rest of his water pouch in one irritated gulp.

“Everyone has their off days, I guess,” said Lance. He hated grumbling about it—he had to pull his own weight around here, after all—but he’d be a dirty liar if he said the scores weren’t discouraging. He heaved a sigh, ditching the drained water pouch in favor of the wet towel. He dabbed at the sweat on his face and neck, trying not to sulk.

Hunk clapped his shoulder a couple of times. “Hey, man, are you doing alright?” Lance paused mid-swipe, raising an eyebrow at Hunk. His friend raised his arms in supplication. “No offense, but you’ve… kinda sucked during the last few days of training. It’s not like you to miss that many shots.” He gestured vaguely at the scoreboard.

Lance _did_ take offense to that, giving Hunk a scoff. “I resent that!” But of course Hunk meant nothing by it. He was just concerned, if the worried pinch of his brow was anything to go by. The irritation quickly gave way to a weary sigh.

“Nah, I’m all good,” he said. “I just gotta get back into the swing of things. It’s been pretty crazy around here the last few weeks, know what I mean?”

Hunk badly suppressed a shudder. “All too well. You’re talking about Naxzela, right?”

Lance winced. “Yeah.”

None of them walked away from Naxzela completely unscathed. Honestly, Lance hadn’t expected to walk away from Naxzela _at all_ , the interruption of their imminent and untimely demise nothing short of miraculous, as far as he was concerned. Coran did warn them, after the prolonged exposure to the immense pressure of Haggar’s magic bearing down on them, that some degree of physical symptoms were not out of the realm of possibility. While most of the others escaped with little more than a headache for a few days, Lance's symptoms ran the gamut. Ringing in his ears, tingling in his extremities, migraines, fatigue, the whole shebang.

Luckily, the majority of the symptoms faded after only a few days. Unluckily, the throbbing in his chest had merely shifted from a constant ache to something that would ebb and flow in waves, and the tremor in his hands never quite went away. Now, three weeks out, what started as a minor irritation was quickly becoming a real problem. One that apparently hadn’t escaped Hunk’s notice.

Lance absently rubbed at his chest with a fist. His hands didn’t shake so much when he did that, even if it didn’t really do anything for the chest pain. A curious hum caught his attention and he turned to see Hunk frowning at him.

“You sure you’re okay? You’ve been doing this a lot, too.” He mimicked the motion, and Lance flushed hot in the face at being caught.

“It’s just a weird habit I picked up. I’m fine.”

Hunk didn’t look entirely convinced. “If you’re sure, but… maybe you ought to let Coran look you over, just in case? It couldn’t hurt.”

Lance had already considered that option. Logically, he knew his symptoms shouldn’t have lasted this long. Everyone else were already well on their way back to tip-top shape. But if something really were wrong—and there _wasn’t_ , Lance was _fine_ , he just had to give it a little more time and it would go away on its own—Coran would tell Allura, and Allura would tell the team, and that was one more thing to add to their plates. They still had Lotor to interrogate, and Zarkon to deal with, and the coalition and everything that came with it, and Keith had slipped off again to heavens only knew where with the Blade of Marmora. Plus, Lance still had a bone to pick with _him_ , the suicidal maniac.

The point was, after everything they’d just been through, Lance couldn’t bear the thought of dragging everyone down.

Lance turned on the bench so that he fully faced Hunk. “It’s fine, dude. Really. If I thought I were sick or something, I’d be the first one to go kicking down Coran’s door, okay? I promise.” He punched Hunk’s arm good-naturedly, willing away that worried frown. The last thing he wanted was to cause his best friend any more trouble than he already did.

A few seconds of Hunk-flavored scrutiny later, the boy sighed. He recognized a lost cause when he saw one. It was something Lance hoped never changed about his friend.

“If you say so…”

 

* * *

 

Lance tried to reign in the panic, he really did.

Usually, Lance was much better at identifying what set off his attacks. So much better, in fact, that he hadn’t _had_ an attack like this in ages. He would figure out what caused it, and then promptly avoid said cause at any and all costs.

“ _You must refrain from putting too much strain on your heart,_ ” he’d been warned. “ _Another episode of that magnitude, and you may not live to speak of it._ ” He took that warning very seriously.

The problem was, usually he didn’t have _so many things_ going wrong, back to back to back. Lance had seen plenty of situations go tits up since that day he first stepped into the Blue Lion, and that was saying something.

But this? This took the cake. Where did he even start?

Keith coming back, and the Altean he brought back with him with news of a colony ( _and_ apparently his mom _and_ a cosmic space wolf?!). Shiro attacking them, or the clone they all _thought_ was Shiro attacking them. The fight with Lotor, and nearly being dissolved into space mulch in the quintessence field. Hunting down Yalmors (Lance would tell you that _no_ , being shrunk to the size of an ant is not good for the heart). That stupid dream with the stupid game show host poking at every single one of his insecurities. The electrical storm. Being stranded, no Lions, no food, no water, no sleep, and toward the end of it, nearly no team. Narrowly escaping the gigantic maw of a hallucinogenic space worm and the nebula that chased it off.

So much for taking it easy on his heart, Lance thought in near hysterics. He might have laughed, were he not so crippled by pain.

Voltron drew up short to an abrupt dead halt, thrusters reversing of their own accord. Confusion and irritation filtered into the Red Lion both through the comms and through the bond Lance shared with the Paladins. Though, the high-pitched whining in his ear dampened much of what he could hear. Lance ripped off his helmet and put his head between his legs, heaving for a breath of air.

Nothing helped. His head still spun. He couldn’t catch his breath. His whole body sagged, and he had to lock his fingers behind his neck to keep them from falling limp to his sides. Strength seeped from him like sand through a sieve. Tinny voices chirped up at him from where his helmet lay abandoned at his feet.

“What’s going on? Why’d we stop?”

“I don’t know. Anyone else able to get a response from Voltron?”

“Negative.”

“Something’s wrong...”

The confusion swelled through the bond, pressing in on Lance from all sides. A quiet gasp blew through his teeth and he shivered against the sensation of a sudden pull—pulling, pulling, pulling down to his very core. And then—

“Whoa! The Lions just forced themselves apart!”

“Paladins! Remain calm!”

“Yellow is _freaking out_ , Princess.”

“So is Green!”

“Everyone, status report!”

The spinning grew steadily worse. Lance clenched his eyes shut against it with a stifled moan. He couldn’t think straight. The muffled chatter of the other Paladins reporting in fell on deaf ears. Breathe. _Breathe_. Tears stung the corners of his eyes as he gulped down as much air as his lungs would take. His head throbbed and his heart pounded in his chest and it _hurt_. Oh God, it hurt so much.

Distantly, the murmur of the others’ voices rose to a crescendo, finally filtering in over the roar of blood rushing in his ears.

“Lance? _Lance, come in!!_ ”

 

* * *

 

Lance’s fingers clenched so tightly around the vial, he could have sworn any tighter that he’d break it. He stared down at it like it might jump up and bite him. He wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t.

“This is…”

“Concentrated quintessence, yes,” the Galra doctor said for the umpteenth time. Lance was clearly trying her patience; it was evident in the testy edge to her voice and the irritated throb of the vein at her temple.

“The same quintessence that you—that the _Empire_ killed or enslaved millions of people for. Destroyed planets by sucking them dry. _That_ quintessence.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m not taking it,” Lance said adamantly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not taking it, and you can’t make me.”

The doctor dropped her head into the palm of her hand with a poorly concealed groan, her elbow falling onto the desk with a loud _thump._ Honestly, Lance thought she didn’t have a leg to stand on. It wasn’t like _she_ was the one out of her element. Lance was the one who had to hunt her down in the middle of a Galra battlecruiser, _alone_ , while the rest of the team were otherwise occupied—the very same type of battlecruiser, he would have you know, that once routinely tried to shoot them out of the sky.

This alliance was too new, too unstable, for Lance to find himself anywhere in the same ballpark as “comfortable” in this office, the walls and shelves lined with unfamiliar tools and jars of… actually, he didn’t want to know what those jars contained.

“Of course I can’t _make you_ do anything, Paladin,” the doctor said, rubbing her temple as she looked back up at him.

“But you’re still trying to tell me this is my only option.”

“It is the most advisable course of action, yes.”

Lance resisted the urge to toss his hands in the air, instead leaning forward in his chair to rest both elbows on his thighs and wringing his hands together. “What about Allura? She healed me before. Why can’t she just, I don’t know, wave her hands and do her magic thing again?”

“We have been over this,” the doctor said tersely. “The princess is a powerful alchemist in her own right, that much is true, but she is untrained. Her powers are too unreliable and could end up harming you more than doing you any benefit.”

“But what about—!”

“Altean healing pods are not all-powerful,” the doctor snapped. “Nor is any Galran pod, for that matter.” Lance scowled and sank back in his chair.

The doctor pinched the bridge of her nose, biting back a sigh and, if Lance had to guess, probably some colorful vernacular that would even make Coran blush. “I admit that my people committed atrocities in the name of the late Emperor Zarkon. I am no champion of what was done, no matter how beneficial the results were. Regardless of your opinions of our past deeds, however, the majority of the Galra are fully committed to Emperor Lotor’s goal of achieving peace.”

A beat of silence fell between them as the doctor deliberated on what next to say. Crossing her arms against her chest, she levelled Lance with a steely glare. Lance squirmed beneath that gaze, feeling foolish. The doctor was right, of course. He _had_ been the one to seek her out, after all. He needed to remember that they were both on the same side here.

At length, the fight seemed to leave the doctor, and her glare dropped into a look of weary exasperation.

“You do not approve of using the quintessence. You have made yourself very clear on the matter. But I am a doctor, and you are my patient. As your doctor, I am telling you that if you do not begin _some_ sort of regular treatment, you will perish. Sooner, rather than later. We have already ruled out any alternatives as ineffective. The quintessence remains your best chance at survival.”

“…how soon is soon?” Lance asked weakly.

The doctor regarded him for a moment, before turning in her chair to reach for one of the devices on a shelf beside her desk. A few taps on the device and a hologram appeared before her, one she casually swiped over so that it hovered before Lance. It displayed a 3D scan of his chest, one littered with what must have been a hundred annotations, all written in the blocky, angular script the Galra used.

Lance couldn’t make heads or tails of the notes, but the sheer number of them gave him pause. That couldn’t be good.

“There is a significant amount of scar tissue in your heart,” the doctor explained, “and the damage is extensive. Scarred tissue doesn’t receive electrical stimuli as well as healthy tissue does. Its performance suffers even more so when placed under extreme duress, such as during the many battles you have faced with Voltron.”

Flicking her fingers, the doctor added another scan to the image, both setting side by side. Lance leaned in to peer at the pictures. The one on the left was his; the one on the right, he supposed, was a mock-up of what a healthy human heart should look like. He gulped—the difference between the two was staggering. The doctor highlighted a dark spot on his scan and pointed at it.

“You run the risk of your heart suffering spontaneous failure, should the stimuli become blocked by such scarred tissue.”

Lance blanched. “You’re saying I’m at risk of a heart attack.”

The doctor hummed thoughtfully. “If that is what you humans call ventricular fibrillation, then yes. If these results are any indication, you have already suffered one such incident.”

“The omega shield,” Lance murmured. Without realizing it, he hugged his arms across his chest, willing the accursed memories away. The doctor nodded, bringing up yet another file on her device.

“I took the liberty of familiarizing myself with that particular mission briefing. You are extremely fortunate the princess was able to revive you in the first place. Another few dobashes or so and you would have been beyond rescue.”

Lance wilted even further into his chair. When he slipped away from the others with the excuse of exploring, he’d been hopeful that the doctor would have some sort of answers for him. And answers she had—answers Lance _really_ didn’t want to hear. A hysterical laugh escaped him before he could stop it.

“I’m supposed to be the heartbreaker around here, not the heartbroken.”

The doctor graced him with a wry smile, the first time since he’d stepped foot into her office she looked anything but dour. “A ‘broken heart’ would not be an entirely inaccurate term for it,” she said. “I don’t suppose human healers would be familiar with this sort of condition in order to treat it?”

“I mean… there are treatments, but they’re… not great. Mesh stents, surgeries. Stuff like that.” Lance shuddered at the thought.

“Then the concentrated quintessence will aid your heart in functioning properly until such a time you are able to return to Earth and seek an alternative.”

She was offering him a compromise, Lance realized, and he had to appreciate that. He nodded slowly, looking down at the vial still gripped in his hand.

“I guess you’d better show me how to jab myself with this thing, then.”

 

* * *

 

Seconds passed that felt like hours.

Every breath came more labored than the last, every pump of his heart weaker than the one before. A sharp pain erupted from beside his eye and blossomed outward. He cried out, warmth and wetness trickling down the side of his face. His eyes snapped open and was met with the sight of grey steel and rivets, not the vast, twinkling expanse of the Milky Way.

Abruptly, Lance realized the throbbing wasn’t his head spontaneously combusting—he’d toppled sideways out of his seat and busted his head on Red’s console.

A rush of guilt and sorrow coursed through him. Blinking slowly, Lance’s addled brain registered that it wasn’t his own emotion, but Red’s. She—was apologizing to him? For what? He tried and failed to roll over onto his back, still gulping and heaving for breath. Leaden limbs twitched in response to his commands, but moved little more than that.

Then there was a voice, hands, a _person_.

A flash of orange appeared, followed by blue and gold. Coran, maybe? Something cold and wet nudged at his neck with a soft, sad whine. Ah, and Kosmo. Strong hands pushed at his shoulders and finally Lance was peering up at the ceiling of Red’s cockpit. What little he could see of it through his rapidly darkening vision, anyway.

“—need you to breathe for me, my boy,” Coran was saying. It took Lance a tremendous amount of effort to decipher the words. Coran sounded so far away. Lance’s eyelids drooped, and Coran quickly patted him, hard, on the cheek. “Lance, where is your medication?”

Medication? Did he have any? He used to, right? On the—oh. “It’s g-gone.”

Coran hissed. “What do you mean, _gone_?”

“Castle,” he choked out. His head fell limp to the side as he forced himself to meet Coran’s distressed gaze. Tears he didn’t realize had pooled in his eyes rolled down the bridge of his nose and dripped to the floor. “S-scared.”

Coran’s already pale face went ashen, his fingers gripping tightly around Lance’s. In a flash, he reached for Lance’s discarded helmet, barking commands to land in the receiver. By then, the tinny ringing in Lance’s ears reached a fever pitch. The pain hadn’t ebbed in several minutes, but at least his heart stopped pounding so damn hard in his chest. Darkness crept in despite Coran’s desperate attempts to keep him awake.

As he faded, he thought of home, and how he’d almost lived to see it one last time.

 

* * *

 

In hindsight, that Coran hadn’t found out sooner was a goddamn miracle.

The infirmary was the only place on the Castle that Lance could safely dispose of his sharps. It made more sense to him to hide the vials there than to stash them in his room and risk getting caught carrying them one by one to the disposal incinerator. He made short work of finding a container to store them in, along with the needles and gauze he’d swiped and the elastic band he used as a tourniquet.

Find a place to _hide_ the container was the tricky part.

Lance hemmed and hawed, that first night he snuck down to the medical deck, examining every nook and cranny for an easily-accessible spot that no one else would think to look. Eventually he’d found a vent panel tucked away behind one of the pods that had gaps on either side, just large enough to slip his fingers under. Perfect.

His plan was fool-proof, or so he’d thought.

It really should have occurred to him that Coran knew the Castle better than any of them, and was observant to boot. He could notice even a speck of dust out of place, _especially_ in the infirmary.

So when Lance snuck into the main room of the medical deck and flipped on the lights to find Coran standing there at the opposite end, container in hand—well, Lance really had no right to be as shocked as he was.

Lance had never seen such a hard and disappointed look on the man’s face before, much less such a look ever directed at _him_. Shame crawled down the back of his neck, and his eyes dropped to the floor, unable to bear the direct weight of that stare. He folded his arms across his chest in discomfort.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“I was curious,” Coran said at length, “when I noticed our depleted stock of syringes. It was most interesting, you see, considering how infrequently I need them to administer anything to our team.” He placed the container down on the counter beside him, its contents rattling as they jostled around inside.

Lance didn’t need any further confirmation—Coran knew _exactly_ what that box contained.

“….it’s not what it looks like,” Lance mumbled. He still couldn’t meet the man’s gaze.

“I’m not certain I can even begin to surmise what, exactly, it is supposed to look like.” Coran’s voice was steady and even, but there was no denying the quiet accusation lacing each and every word. Lance’s hands gripped at either sleeve, playing with the frayed edges anxiously.

“I’m not a junkie, I swear.”

A soft hum. “Really.” It wasn’t a question. “Tell me truthfully, Lance. If I were to ask you to roll up your sleeves and show me your arms, what would I find there?”

Embarrassed tears burned Lance’s eyes, but he refused to let them fall. He bit down hard on his quivering lip to choke them back, words dying in his throat in the meanwhile. Silence thick with tension stretched between them. Lance didn’t know what to do. Coran had to have come to the wrong conclusion given the evidence before him. _God_ , he must be thinking so many terrible, horrible things of Lance.

He was caught. He needed to fess up to everything. He needed to clear the air, to prove to Coran that this was all just a big misunderstanding.

But…

How could Lance possibly tell the man he looked up to like a father that his heart was slowly dying?

“I…”

Eyes growing wide as saucers, Lance considered the thought. He hadn’t admitted it to himself until that very moment. The truth hit him like a ton of bricks.

He was dying.

“I just…”

The trembling started in his chest, radiating outwards until his whole body quavered. Lance curled his shoulders in, tucking his chin even further down into his chest, and he tugged even harder at his sleeves in distress. Tears finally fell, cascading down his face. He couldn’t stop them even if he tried.

He was _dying_.

“Lance…?”

Lance snapped his head up. His reaction must have shocked Coran, because the man took a tentative step closer to him. A bewildered expression replaced the cold displeasure there, and he raised a hesitant hand, letting it hover over Lance’s shoulder.

Lance’s face crumbled along with his resolve.

Without thinking he closed the distance between them, burying his face into Coran’s chest. He loosened his grip on his sleeves only long enough to latch desperately onto the back of Coran’s shirt. Coran made a startled noise, but didn’t miss a beat before he wrapped his arms around Lance in a comforting embrace. Any trace of his earlier disappointment vanished in favor confusion, concern, and even a bit of fear.

“Please talk to me, my boy. What’s wrong?”

Lance shook his head and clung harder. His knees gave out beneath him without warning, and Coran held him close as they both sank to the ground.

Later, he would tell Coran about Naxzela, and the omega shield, and how he’d died and no one knew, _no one cared_.

Later, he would tell Coran about the chest pains and the breathing problems and the palpitations and the tremors in his hands. He would tell him about the grim diagnosis and the treatment he had no choice but to endure.

Later, he would confess why he’d kept it a secret, one he held close to his heart and buried under lock and key. He would beg Coran not to tell the others, _please don’t tell them, I’m begging you, don’t let them kick me off the team—_

Later, he would tell Coran everything.

But for now, he sat there in the protective circle of Coran’s embrace and he wept.

 

* * *

 

Darkness.

There was darkness, and then there wasn’t.

A jolt ran through his every nerve, every fiber of his being. His arms spasmed violently and his back arched off the ground. He gasped, a broken and desperate thing. His eyes snapped open, a myriad of colors dancing in his vision. Anguished voices broke through the deafening ringing in his ears.

“—can’t do that again—”

“—could kill him—”

“—don’t have a choice—”

“—not working, I don’t—”

He couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. The pain was setting in now, like he’d simultaneously been punched full-force in the chest and stuck his finger in a live socket. Air wasn’t coming, no matter how much he gasped for it.

The colors dissolved into darkness once more.

Another jolt.

More pressure on his chest, up and down and up and down, over and over and over again. His head moved, tilted back. He didn’t think he was doing it himself and then—air. For two whole seconds, air. Precious, precious air.

“— _breathe_ , damn you—”

After that, Lance saw only flashes; fleeting snapshots of sights and sounds and smells.

Hands that never stopped stroking his hair, though they alternated from small and frail to big and soft and warm. More shouting. Eruptions of a firefight in the distance, and maybe nearby. The smell of burning oil and the scorching heat of flames licking at his face.

In a brief moment of clarity, Lance woke to find himself being carried on someone’s back. Gunfire exploded around them, that much he could tell. A moan rumbled deep in his chest and he regretted it instantly. The pain reminded him just how much of a bad idea that was.

Maybe it would have been better if he’d just stayed dead the first time around.

They jerked to a stop. The back beneath him staggered on a sharp inhale. Arms tightened their grip around his thighs.

“ _What?!_ ”

Oh. Had he said that out loud? He hadn’t realized. He didn’t mean to. It didn’t matter.

Darkness took him once more, drowning out the strained and worried voices still calling out to him.

Then he was moving, all at once smooth and bumpy and much too fast for human speed. Not a speeder, not enough wind. Not an ambulance, not enough noise. A Humvee? His head was pillowed on something soft. A hand found its way back into his hair, and another grasped at one of the arms that lay limp across Lance’s stomach. The hands were strong and deft this time.

These were the hands that carried him, before. He was sure of it. How exactly he was certain, he couldn’t say.

Chatter echoed around him, dampened by the roar of an engine and too many voices overlapping all at once. The hand around his wrist squeezed in intervals, two fingers pressed to his bared pulse point. The hand in his hair never stopped its gentle carding. _Just hold on_ , the hands seemed to say. Maybe someone said it out loud, too. _You’re going to be okay_.

Lance believed it, and let himself be pulled under into the dark and silent abyss.

When next he surfaced, there was chaos. Lots of screaming and crying. Everything was heavy. His head, his arms and legs. So very heavy. He couldn’t lift his limbs, but it didn’t stop him from trying. Two solid arms supported him under his shoulder blades and his knees, but his head lolled, thumping painfully against a hard-plated chest.

“—need a medic over here—”

He was laid out flat. The strong arms were gone. Lance missed them and their warmth instantly. He tried to move again, wanting to reach out for those arms, desperate for the comfort he found there. He couldn’t even so much as twitch.

“—get off me, I’m not leaving him—”

“—let us do our job, kid—”

“—where are you taking him?! Hey!—”

Moving again, and the hands were back. New ones, fingers prying back the layers of his armor. Too many thunderous footsteps, and still too many voices. Lance might have managed a stifled moan. He really couldn’t tell.

“—is Uncle Lance gonna—”

Uncle Lance? He hadn’t been called that in a long time. So long, in fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time he heard it. Those voices stirred something in him. He should recognize those voices, he thought distantly. Summoning the very last of his strength, he tilted his head of his own accord, just so.

Abruptly, all movement stopped. Everything went deathly silent.

A hand found his. Another new hand. One that was soft and warm and gentle—Lance knew this hand.

“ _Despiértate, mijo. Despiértate para mí_.”

_Wake up, baby. Wake up for me._

Lance knew that voice.

“Mamá,” he wheezed.

The hand squeezed his again. Lance still couldn’t open his eyes—oh, but did he try. How he’d longed to see his mother again. She was so close, she was _right there_. Frustration swelled in his chest alongside the pain. He wanted to see her. He could see her if he could _just open his damn eyes_.

“ _No te preocupes, mi cielito_ ,” his mother whispered, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. “ _Estoy aquí. Estarás bien, ¿lo entiendes? No mueras, te lo ruego_.”

Despite her reassurances, despite her begging him to be okay, Lance didn’t have any strength left in him to answer.

Something wet hit his cheeks—whether they were his mother’s tears or his own, he couldn’t tell—but the cacophony picked right back up with heightened frenzy, and his mother’s hand slipped from his. Her anguished cries followed him, joining others, until the grew quiet and ultimately vanished from his ears.

Was he dreaming? Had he imagined her there the whole time? He heard of Death taking pity on the dying, giving them visions of their innermost desires as they slipped away. But Lance was afraid. He wanted his mother’s presence back.

A whimper escaped him, a pitiful cry out to her.

Someone slid a mask over his face. Down Lance fell, down, down, into the waiting darkness, dragged under once again.

This time, he did not resurface.

 

* * *

 

“What are you doing?”

Lance jerked, a jagged and errant stroke of the pen marring the page he’d left off on. Scowling at his mistake, Lance slammed his journal shut and looked up over the back of the pilot’s seat to see Keith peering curiously up at him through the maw of the Red Lion.

“Writing soliloquies. Gotta make sure my heroic deeds are immortalized and all that, you know,” Lance quipped. He shot Keith a couple of finger guns for good measure. Keith snorted.

“You realize soliloquies are, by definition, passed by word of mouth, right?”

“So _someone_ paid attention in English lit. I’m a defender of the universe. If I call it a soliloquy, it’s a soliloquy. Sue me!”

“Whatever you say, hero man.” Keith jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “The soliloquy can wait. Dinner is ready.”

Lance wasn’t exactly hungry. He hadn’t _been_ hungry much lately, to be perfectly honest. Going cold turkey off the quintessence had absolutely wrecked his appetite. Not that Keith knew that. Still, if Keith’s expression was anything to go by, it hadn’t escaped his notice that Lance skipped out on dinner three nights in a row.

“I’m gonna pass,” Lance said, settling back in his cot and turning back to his journal. Keith’s frown deepened. Lance pointedly ignored it.

“Lance, you need to eat,” Keith started, but Lance was already shaking his head.

“Do _you_ fancy eating those weird-ass tubers that Coran insists on making?” Lance stole a glance at Keith, who’d wrinkled his nose in response. A surge of fond amusement flared up in Lance. “Didn’t think so.”

“Yeah, well, beggars can’t be choosers. Even if I would rather eat goo at this point,” Keith added in a mutter. “We need to keep our strength up.”

“I’m fine.”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith huffed, exasperated. He clambered up into the Lion proper, plopping down onto the cot beside Lance. Lance pretended not to notice him, but Keith gently pried the journal out of his hands and set it aside. Lance let out an indignant squawk.

“I was using that, thank you very much!”

“And now you’re not,” Keith said. His bluntness left no room for argument. He met Lance’s irritated scowl with a raised eyebrow until Lance caved and handed the pen over, too. For a few moments, the two of them sat in awkward silence. When it became clear that Lance wasn’t going to break it, Keith sighed.

“You know you can talk to me if anything’s bothering you, right?”

Lance finally looked up. The look on Keith’s face was so genuinely earnest, just barely shy of overwhelming. Lance squirmed under that gaze. It almost tempted him to spill his guts about everything, the way he had with Coran.

Almost.

Instead, Lance blew a heavy breath out between his teeth and settled for a half-truth. He slumped back against the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest. “I’m just… I don’t know, man. I guess I’m nervous about going back home.”

Keith’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You were the one most excited out of all of us to be going back to Earth.” It wasn’t an accusation, per se. More so searching, confused.

“I am!” Lance said quickly. “It’s just been so long. What if they’re mad at us for leaving? What if they _hate_ us? And, I mean, I’ve already… _we’ve_ already lost our home twice. You know, first having to leave Earth in the first place with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Then we blew up the Castle to keep that rift from going supernova.”

The Castle _and_ everything in it, including Lance’s personal comm with all his memories stored on it, his beloved brother’s jacket, and the last vials of his medication. Lance clenched his trembling hands together and set them in his lap.

“What if… what if there’s no Earth to go back to?” He couldn’t bear the thought.

“Earth _will_ be there.”

The sheer determination in Keith’s voice took Lance by surprise. His head snapped up. Keith wasn’t looking at him, focusing instead on some point on the wall across from them. “…you think so?”

“I know so. Anything else isn’t an option.” Keith turned his head to look Lance in the eye. He firmly believed what he was telling Lance was the truth, that much was clear. “No one else is going to lose their family. I promise.”

Lance’s chest twinged, as if to taunt Lance. _Who’s to say your family won’t lose you?_ it seemed to say. Lance gulped around the lump that settled in his throat.

“Thanks, man,” Lance said weakly. Keith offered him a smile. After a moment of hesitation, he threw an arm around Lance and pulled him in for a side hug. Lance went willingly, letting his head rest on Keith’s shoulder. The gentle stroking of Keith’s thumb against the junction of his neck soothed him, if only a bit.

“I mean it, Lance. You’ll see your family again.” Lance made a non-committal hum in response.

He wished he could believe that as wholly as Keith did.

 

* * *

 

Awareness came to Lance slowly.

First came sound. Beeping, soft and steady somewhere to his left. The quiet rumble of an air conditioner. Distant murmurs of conversation. Squeaking trainers and the clack of heels against waxed floors.

Next came smells. The pungent odor of hospital-grade sanitizer, mingling oddly with the smell of _mariposa_ and wood smoke. And plastic—he belatedly realized there was an oxygen tube laced around his ears and tucked up into his nostrils. His mouth tasted like something died in it, and his throat ached when he tried to swallow to rid his mouth of it.

Nearly every part of him ached, truth be told.

Then came the feeling of warmth on his hands. Two different kinds of warmth, in fact; one soft and gentle, like a flicker of a candle flame, the other calloused and rough and borderline burning hot and all-encompassing. Tentatively, he tested moving his own fingers. They twitched in response, albeit slow and stiff, but it was a start.

“—think he’s waking up,” someone said above him. The voice was hushed, almost reverent and tinged with disbelief. “Lance? Can you hear me?”

Lance licked his lips, dry and cracked from disuse. No words came to him when he summoned them, and he managed little more than a garbled moan. Okay, talking just yet wasn’t going to happen. He scrunched his heavy eyes in hopes of prying them open instead, even just a crack. One heartbeat passed, and another, and on the third, he succeeded at last.

Rather, he succeeded for a split second before he had to slam them shut again.

The light in the room was blinding, stark and white. He couldn’t even see past it long enough to determine where he was or who was there with him. Someone cursed loudly, and the calloused hand disappeared. There was the scuffle of chairs and footsteps for a moment before it settled as quickly as it began.

“It’s okay, Lance, we’ve dimmed the lights for you. You can— _please_ open your eyes.”

The soft hand squeeze his own, and the calloused one returned to hold him steady by the shoulder. Somehow, Lance mustered the strength to peel his eyes open a second time. The world blurred into focus. True to their word, the room was much dimmer this time around. It took him a long moment, but finally Lance could see clear enough to pick out the ceiling tiles above his bed.

He let his head fall to the right, and his gaze fell on the calloused hand on his shoulder. His gaze trailed up, from calloused fingertips to worn black gloves to the rumpled red sleeve of a once-pressed uniform to…

“Hey, mullet,” Lance croaked.

A pitiful attempt at a smile graced Lance’s lips, scarcely an upward twitch at the corners. Keith’s fingers dug into the sleeve of his smock. Lance took the chance to study Keith’s face, blinking slowly as he attempted to clear the haze of unconsciousness for good.

Keith looked like he hadn’t slept in days, his puffy eyes rimmed with red and heavy shadows. His hair was askew and greasy, and both his unzipped uniform jacket and the black t-shirt beneath it hung loose on his torso. The color had left Keith’s face, and he stared at Lance as though staring at a ghost.

Maybe he was. Lance wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he still lived.

Swallowing the lump back down his throat, he tried for a laugh. It sounded more like a choked cough. Lance grimaced.

“You look like shit,” said Lance. God, his voice sounded like sandpaper.

Keith didn’t laugh. Didn’t even chuckle. Conflicting emotions flashed in his eyes as he continued to stare, too fast for Lance to keep up with, let alone identify. Keith stood there staring in stony silence for a long time.

“You’re one to talk,” he finally said. He sounded strained.

Before Lance could justify that with an answer, the soft hand found its way into his hair, stroking the locks there gently. A stifled sob came from his left. Lance summoned the energy, making a tremendous effort to swivel his head over to his other side.

All the air left him in a rush.

“Mamá,” he gasped.

It wasn’t a dream. His mamá was really here.

The woman’s face lit up in a brilliant smile in spite of the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, mijo,” she said. Her free hand came up to cover her mouth as she began to weep unbidden, never slowing the fingers in Lance’s hair. “Oh, _mi hijo pobrecito. Estás vivo. No puedo creerlo, mi hijo regresó a mí._ ”

There were more lines on her face than he ever remembered seeing there, and she was thinner than when he saw her last. More grey hairs peppered the fringe around her hairline. But her eyes were just as warm, just as loving and affectionate as always. Here she was, not only _not_ infuriated with him that he’d gone without a word, but overcome with joyous disbelief that he’d returned, that he was _alive_. It was more than Lance could possibly have hoped for.

Tears came before he realized it. He took a shuddering breath, and then another. His chin wobbled and he blinked rapidly in a futile attempt to keep the tears from falling, biting down on his lip to keep the sobs at bay.

“ _Está bien, mijo_ ,” his mother whispered. “ _Puedes llorar si lo necesitas_.”

_It’s okay, baby. You can cry if you need to._

Lance couldn’t take it. His face crumbled. The first tear fell hot and steady down his cheek, the rest following in an unbidden stream. His aching body screamed in protest as the tears quickly turned into gut-wrenching sobs. He leaned desperately into his mother’s touch, reaching out a quaking hand to her. She took it between both of hers without hesitation.

“ _Discúlpame, Mamá_ ,” Lance wept. He clung to her hand, a tether to the world when it felt as though it were collapsing around him. “ _Disculpa que desaparecí. Disculpa que tengo este estúpido corazón roto. Nunca quería lastimarte, Mamá, discúlpame_.”

Apologies poured from his lips one after the other. Each word tore at his throat, clawing its way out of him and leaving him raw inside and out. But he had to fight through it, because he had to tell her how sorry he was, she _had to know_. She had to know sorry he was he’d disappeared, how sorry he was that he’d gotten sick. He’d never meant to hurt her.

A part of him said he didn't deserve her forgiveness. Lance begged her for it anyway.

It seemed an age that Lance lied there and wept, his mother whispering nonsensical words of comfort against the back of his palm. As the last of his cries dwindled down to hiccups and sniffles, Lance gulped down air in little gasps. The crying jag left him with a bone-deep exhaustion and a tight and throbbing ache in his chest that reminded him exactly what he’d been through.

Off to his right, Keith cleared his throat awkwardly. Lance blinked slowly, turning his head back to face him. He’d honestly forgotten Keith was there; somewhere in his fit, Keith withdrew the hand that gripped his shoulder.

“I, uh… I can leave, if you need a family moment…” Keith trailed off, looking at Lance’s mother and pointing a half-hearted thumb over his shoulder towards the door.

“Nonsense,” she said, delicately dabbing at the streaks down her face. But her brilliant smile never faltered. She rose from her chair and placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “You brought him home to us, chiquito. You _are_ family.”

That caught Keith off-guard. His eyes widened and he gaped, lost for words.

Lance’s mother gave Keith a knowing smile, patting him gently before turning her gaze back on Lance. She lovingly wiped the tears from his cheeks, mindful of his oxygen tube, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I need to let your father and siblings know you’re awake, mi cielito,” she murmured, brushing his hair down flat where she’d ruffled it before. “And probably the doctors. They’ll want to see you too. Keith will sit with you. Won’t you, chiquito?”

Keith nodded wordlessly, still stunned.

Lance wanted to protest, the words _don’t leave me_ rearing up on the tip of his tongue. But his mother gave him no chance to say them, sparing him and Keith both one last fond look before she scurried from the room. No doubt she figured the faster she went, the sooner she could return. A dreadful silence followed in her wake, Keith still standing awkwardly at Lance’s bedside.

As usual, Keith broke the tension first, all but collapsing into the chair he’d vacated beside Lance. He dropped his face into his hands, a loud and heavy sigh whistling from behind his fingers.

“If I went my whole life without ever going through that again, it would still be too soon,” he said, his weary voice muffled by his palms.

“What,” Lance quipped hoarsely, giving Keith a tired smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes, “embarrassing yourself in front of my mom? Fat chance. She pretty much adopted you just now. You’re doomed to a lifetime of humiliation.”

Keith didn’t deign to answer that. Instead, he lifted head up to stare at Lance, his jaw dropping in incredulity. Lance shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of that stare. Keith’s throat worked silently around words he could not grasp, opening and closing his mouth on several false starts.

“You’re joking,” he said. “You’re actually joking.”

A humorless chuckle bubbled out of him, short and aborted. “You—I _cannot believe you_ —after all that’s happened—” he cut himself off. He chuckled again, and again. And he didn’t stop. It quickly went from quiet and breathy to bellowing laughter, but it wasn’t a joyous laugh. No, it was fevered and hysterical. Lance watched in wide-eyed astonishment as Keith doubled over in his chair, clutching his stomach from laughing so hard his shoulders quaked with the force of it.

“What _did_ happen?” he ventured to ask.

Keith shook his head, instead cupping both of his hands over his nose and mouth to stifle the noises coming out of him. The laughter grew distorted, reedy. The length of Keith’s hair shrouded his face. Lance reached over to brush the fringe aside to get a better look, but Keith flinched as though he’d been punched.

“Keith, what…”

Lance’s words died on his lips as Keith sat himself upright again. So long as he lived, he would never forget the absolutely _shattered_ expression on Keith’s face.

Keith wasn’t laughing now. He was sobbing. His next words came out choked and strained.

“Coran told us everything.”

 _Oh._ All the color drained from Lance’s face.

“I…”

Lance paused. Those four words were so loaded. What did he even say to that? As it turned out, he didn’t need to say anything at all, because Keith barreled on.

“ _Why_?” It came out as a desperate plea for answers Lance wasn’t sure he could give. “Why didn’t you _say_ something?” Lance tore his gaze away from Keith’s, staring instead at the potted flower in the windowsill. The curtains billowed in the nighttime breeze coming in from the open window.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Lance lied.

“That’s _bullshit_!”

Keith threw his arms up in the air with a frustrated growl, and Lance couldn’t hold back his flinch. “You _died_. Any incidents in space you _neglected_ to tell anyone aside,” and here he leveled Lance with a furious, tear-riddled glare, “you died _three times_ before they got you into surgery. Three times, Lance! We had to… Had to…”

Lance stole a glance when Keith suddenly trailed off. He watched as Keith pressed a fist to his mouth, struggling to choke back more sobs.

“We had to shock you with Pidge’s bayard twice,” he said when he’d collected himself. “I was so sure we’d killed you the second time. CPR wasn’t working. And then you started breathing again, and I… _God_ , Lance. You scared the hell out of me. I had no idea what was happening. No one did, except Coran. When he told us, I didn’t want to believe him.”

Lance didn’t doubt that. Flashes of angry shouting surfaced in his mind’s eye. With the clarity of consciousness, he could pick out Keith’s voice from the din.

Keith shook from head to toe in his chair. He looked just a thread’s width from falling apart. His voice came strained and reedy when he continued. “But the truth was that you were dying right there in my arms and I _couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it_.”

Lance’s eyes burned with the promise of more tears. He took a tremulous breath, chancing meeting Keith’s gaze again. No wonder he was a wreck.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said, his voice barely audible. “I just... I couldn’t drag the team down. I didn’t want to be a burden.”

“You weren’t! You _aren’t_!” Keith’s face looked as desperate as Lance felt. He gripped the arms of his chair so tight it was a wonder it wasn’t crushed into splinters. “When have you ever been a burden to us, Lance? To _me_?”

“I wasn’t contributing anything,” said Lance. Thinking about that hurt. Why was Keith pushing this? Why couldn’t he just _understand_? Didn’t he see how useless Lance was? Surely the others told him as much. “No one needed me around. Hell, they even had to have Shiro babysit me when the Castle lost power.”

Never mind the fact that his condition was gravely exacerbated by the quickly thinning oxygen in the Castle. If he was freaking out then, well, it was justified.

“But that doesn’t—”

“You weren’t there, Keith,” Lance cut in. “You _left_.”

Keith froze. Horror washed over his features. Lance bunched the blankets up in his fists and continued, because now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop.

“When you left, no one had time for me anymore. ‘Team Punk,’” he snorted derisively, “were always off doing their own thing. Allura had Lotor and their Sincline ship project. Coran and Shiro didn’t need my opinions for battle strategies. Shiro _definitely_ didn’t want them.” Memories of his hero shouting at him echoed in his ears as loud as the day he heard them. The lump rose in his throat again, and this time it was harder to swallow down.

“Even you blew me off when you got back.” He met Keith’s horrified gaze and knew he didn’t have to explain further. They both knew what he meant.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I get it, man,” Lance said quickly. He didn’t like that gutted look on Keith’s face. “Lotor was a traitor and Shiro was… well, wasn’t Shiro. We had more pressing issues to deal with at the time.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. Seriously, I get it. It’s fine.”

“It is _not fine_ ,” Keith said emphatically. “You almost… you could’ve died—”

“I think we established that.”

“ _Listen_ ,” Keith barked. Lance snapped his mouth shut. “You could’ve died thinking that you were… were a _burden_ , or… or _worthless_. That we made you feel that way, that _I_ made you feel like…” The wild hysteria was back in his eyes, swirling with guilt and pain and horrified tears that began to stream down his face again in earnest.

Keith reached out and pulled Lance’s hand back into his, holding it tight. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, Lance. I screwed up.” He leaned down and pressed his forehead to Lance’s thigh as his body was racked with sobs once more.

So bewildered by this turn of events, Lance couldn’t do anything but stare in a stunned silence. Lance didn’t think he’d ever seen Keith shed a tear before today, let alone openly weep. Keith held fast to his hand like a man drowning in a rough and churning sea. Seeing Keith completely break down like this was unsettling, to say the least. That _Lance_ was the reason… Lance tilted his head up and stared resolutely at the ceiling, willing heartbroken tears of his own away. Despite his best efforts, a few leaked past his eyelids and dripped down his chin.

It was all he could do to return Keith’s hold in equal fervor, stroking his thumb against the curve of Keith’s knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” Keith whimpered, over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

Lance couldn’t tell how long Keith wept. Long enough that the leg of his smock was soaked through to the skin with tears. Eventually Keith managed to quiet himself, quelling the tremors to the occasional twitch and letting his breath even out. Lance kept moving his thumb in a manner he hoped was comforting.

For a while, neither of them moved, the silence broken only by the steady beeping of the monitors beside Lance and the occasional sniffle from Keith. Lance couldn’t help the fondness that swelled up in his chest beside the persistent pain. He was probably embarrassed by that outburst.

“Hey,” he said, gently nudging Keith with his knee. Keith didn’t lift his head. Lance nudged him again. “Keith, please look at me.”

Reluctantly, Keith sat up. His face was red and splotchy, tear streaks staining his cheeks and his forehead creased from being pressed against Lance’s leg for so long. The fondness amped up another notch.

“I don’t blame you,” Lance said. With a small grunt of effort, he stretched out his free hand and tucked a strand of frazzled hair behind Keith’s ear. “Any of you. Yeah, okay, you guys hurt my feelings. But this thing with my heart…” He nodded vaguely down at his chest. “That isn’t anyone’s fault. Not… not even my own.”

Admitting that felt… liberating. The vice grip around his heart loosened, if only a fraction. A small smile graced his lips as he continued, letting his hand linger on Keith’s face.

“So you don’t get to blame yourself, alright?”

Keith’s gaze bore into him, his expression unreadable as a hundred different emotions flickered across his face in rapid succession. He reached up a hand to lay it on top of the one Lance still had pressed to his cheek. Lance watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed, letting his eyes fall close and a few last tears slip out and fall over their clasped hands.

Then Keith opened his eyes again, and took a deep breath.

“My mom…” he said, drawing out the word for a long beat. “Krolia, I mean… she told me once, when we were in the quantum abyss, that sometimes we have to leave in order to protect the ones we love most.”

Keith paused, seemingly searching for words just beyond his grasp. Lance blinked in confusion at him, unsure of where he was going with this. He said nothing, letting Keith take his time. Keith pressed his lips together tightly, steadying his breathing. Realization dawned on Lance that Keith was struggling to hold himself together.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Keith whispered brokenly, his fingers tightening around Lance’s own, “that you just might be that person to someone?”

Lance searched Keith’s face for any hint as to what he meant, his heart doing a painful little flip. A voice in his head whispered _you know exactly what he means_. Lance hushed it.

“What are you saying?” he asked, never breaking their gaze.

“I’m saying that that’s what you are to me.”

The air left Lance all at once.

“…what?” he breathed. Keith’s grip tightened even more.

“I won’t insult you by saying that I didn’t leave because I needed to find myself,” he said. Somehow, he managed to keep his voice steady. “But… Lance, I… You love flying Red, and… and you were so worried about there being too many Paladins. I didn’t want to take that away from you. So I left. I figured me leaving would be a _good_ thing, that you’d be _happy_ about it. If I’d known for a second that I was hurting you by leaving, I would never have done it. I didn’t know you wanted me to… to stay.”

Keith blew out a forceful breath. He dropped his hand at last, and Lance let his own fall limp to settle across his stomach. Keith rose from his chair and stepped closer, settling himself on the edge of the bed beside Lance. Their other hands still remained clasped tight between them.

Lance stared mesmerized as Keith moved to mirror Lance’s earlier action, brushing an errant strand of fringe out of Lance’s eyes and thumbing gently at the drying tear tracks on his cheeks.

“I would have stayed, if you’d only asked me to.”

Lance drew in a sharp breath. His heartbeat quickened to a wild tempo, every painful thump against his ribcage like a hammer. But he didn’t care. If anything, he almost would have believed this all a dream were it not for the ache in his chest reminding him that this was very real. Keith said nothing else, but his eyes spoke volumes in the silence. Lance’s gaze flickered to the thumb still stroking his cheek, so gentle, so mindful not to disturb the tubes there.

Lance opened his mouth, then closed it again. Licked his cracked, chapped lips, and tried again.

“If I asked you to… would you stay now?” Lance asked, timid and meek.

Keith’s thumb stopped.

“ _Are_ you asking?”

Lance said nothing. Instead he turned his face into Keith’s hand and, taking a soft breath, placed a kiss to the inside of his palm. His eyes drifted closed for only a moment, savoring the warmth and the strength of that hand. Then he opened his eyes again and met Keith’s gaze.

“Keith… will you stay?”

The resulting smile was something Lance wouldn’t soon forget. It was _radiant_ , dawning over his face like the prettiest of sunrises Lance had ever seen even in spite of the tears staining his face.

Keith leaned down and pressed his lips gently—so gently—to the uninjured side of Lance’s face. Keith’s breath ghosted over his face, and he felt rather than saw the corners of Keith’s lips grow impossibly wider there against his temple.

He gave his answer there, emphatic but scarcely louder than a murmur, speaking the words like a promise into Lance’s skin.

“You only had to ask.”


End file.
